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Posts Tagged "bad ideas"

I think we can all agree that some incredibly lame shit is circulating out there in the world today thanks to the meddling efforts of oblivious, well-do-to goons who don’t know the first thing about skateboarding. There’s a reason the fundamental design of a skateboard has not been largely changed or improved in the 50-some years that skateboards have actually existed — it is essentially perfect already. No amount of added wheels, or snaking, segmented sections, or hand-breaking mechanisms will ever make a significant positive impact on your skateboarding experience. In fact, most attempts to update the tried-and-true formula result in little more than laugh-worthy new ways to hurt yourself and look stupid while doing it.

Then, on the other side of the spectrum, there’s also no shortage of people trying to find new, fashionable applications for skateboards. Rather than reinvent the skateboard, these intrepid innovators have tried to reinvent other things using skateboards — be it furniture, platform heels, and now even work-out routines, if there’s a way to incorporate a skateboard into something that already exists, chances are good somebody has tried it, because people are greedy and oblivious. Case in point:

Why you should try it
Because you’re alone, desperate, and have never done a single cool thing in your entire life.

Now, maybe I’m just biased here, but I kind of tend to think, you know, actually skateboarding would be a much better way to improve your image using a skateboard, as opposed to using a board for some emasculating work-out routine in order to attain “skateboard abs.” Doing doggy-style reps, bent over on your brand new cruiser as if you’re a brand new cruiser just doesn’t seem to exude quite the same sexiness. Maybe I’m wrong.

Skate parks, love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re certainly not going anywhere. With more of them popping up pretty much everywhere by the year (seriously, they’ve even got them in Uganda and shit now), more skaters than ever are being exposed to them. Growing up, I remember practically salivating as I paged through the latest issue of Thrasher, eyes darting back and forth across the photos of utopian concrete wonderlands as if it was all some vintage pornography I found stashed in the back shed. The truth is, the megalithic bowl complexes out in the Pacific Northwest made the waterlogged 70s bush I found out in the shed seem even less appetizing than it already did. And they certainly weren’t doing any favors for my local “skate park,” which was little more than a collection of shoddily assembled, scalding hot metal ramps strewn about in a sandy parking lot. But over the years, and thanks to skateboarding’s increasing mainstream popularity, the state of the skate park nation has changed. Or has it?

I’ve got to thank my buddies over at Jenkem for tipping me off about this eyesore a couple days ago. In fact, that’s probably the only time anybody’s ever thanked another person for passing along information about this park, so I’m feeling pretty good about my accomplishments so far today.

Seriously, who’s responsible for designing this one? Sadomasochist Skateparks International? These people should be held accountable for their crimes. This is an abomination, its very existence a scar on the earth’s tortured flesh.

Here’s another angle at some of the park’s other “attractions.” For the record, the rough translation of “attractions” into whatever harsh Eastern European language they speak in the barren land that this monstrosity calls home is “torture rack.” Just some food for thought.

Look, I’m all for inciting progression in skateboarding, but this just seems a little mean-spirited. That said, I’d love to see somebody try to ride it. Maybe boost off the kicker, over the flat, and onto the rail? Although an unlikely feat for anyone who isn’t Brandon Westgate or something, it still doesn’t seem nearly as ridiculous a prospect as the process of designing this park must have been.

In a world full of skate parks and very few people who actually understand skateboarding, at least some of them are guaranteed to be heaping steamers. And like the glutton for punishment that I am (aren’t all skateboarders a little bit anyway?), I couldn’t help but pursue a quest to find more of these shocking insults to the art of skate park building. It took me down the dankest, darkest corridors of the Internet where only the vilest filth sees fit to live. Fitting then, considering the “parks” I found there. Some of them are so insane they could be considered abstract art. Others practically skate-stop themselves. Indeed, not even a rollerblader would dare set boot in these foul places.

So this is some next level shit. Build a perfect, shallow pool, and then fill the flat bottom with rails and other assorted death traps so nobody can use any of it! But I guess at least it would keep you on your toes. Really no clue what the fuck they were thinking with those poles though. Maybe in case it floods and sharks come? I don’t know. Surf’s up, dude.

Wonder what’s gone down on this? A couple wallies?

But wait… if you stretch it to about 300% its width, it starts to look like something somebody could actually ride. Although that rail is still a fucking Million-Dollar-Baby-in-the-making as far as I’m concerned…

I think they must have put the fence around this “halfpipe” to contain it, kind of like the contamination zone they set up around Chernobyl after the reactor meltdown. Nothing can survive there for long. Yes, you would do well to stay far, far away from there.

Speaking of halfpipes, I don’t know what the fuck this thing is supposed to be, but I’d actually be kind of psyched to skate that. For like 10 whole minutes.

Don’t get me wrong. By any objective standard, this thing is fucking awful. But I’m still willing to bet I could have some fun on it. Until I fell on it and got covered in second degree burns, anyway.

See, a little relativity will fuck you up. That metal spine might look like a good way to bruise your tailbone and not much else, but the reality is, things could be so much worse…

What’s that anonymous dirt path to nowhere, you might ask? A close up of the sign towards the back might provide some insight…

I love that they have the gall to require helmets. What… in case one of the nearby trees falls on you?

So, complain about how crowded your local skate park might be during these long summer months when droves of kids on scooters are out of school and set loose on the fine quarterpipes of this country, but never take for granted the fact that you’ve got a skate park worth crowding. Indeed, you could very easily have the entire afternoon to yourself at one of the aforementioned tantalizing destinations, but… would you really even want to? That sounds almost more like a punishment than a good session, if you ask me. I might be a glutton for punishment, but even I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Personally, I’d rather be sent to bed without any dinner.

One time I thought I was pregnant while I was skating, but it turned out my guts were just brewing up a mean batch of diarrhea.

You know, as much as I love skateboarding and wish my own mother had encouraged me to start doing it at a younger age so I’d suck a little less at it now, I’m still having a little trouble supporting this particular life choice. Even the kid in the back kind of looks like he’s thinking, “Man, I’m sure glad my mom didn’t do that.” Don’t get me wrong, I understand. Nine months is a long time to stay off your board. But the average human lifespan is also a long time to be, like, totally fucked up and deformed like a little Kuato in Nike SBs.

Basically, this fetus is either going to end up the next best skateboarder ever… or totally retarded.

Naturally, I love the fat kid holding a board that doesn’t even have trucks or griptape on it. What, did he just buy that from Pac Sun and they’re celebrating in the parking lot of the mall? Worse than him though is probably the dude on the right, who I guess is really going for that hipster-irony thing with his “I am swag” t-shirt, which is so obviously incorrect.

Is this one of those “miracles” they were talking about? Because, right now, I’m significantly more confused than Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope trying to understand the principles of magnetism.

Never did I hope to see those two ridiculous faces on this blog, but the world is a terrible place, and sometimes good people are made to do terrible things.

I don’t really give a shit about Juggalo Fever, however, the relative insanity of this partnership has forced my hand. Our culture is imploding. If ICP selling well over 6.5 million albums was an indication of the beginning of the end, then this collaboration with Jack White must mean we’re well into the death throes by now. If only there was a seven nation army to hold you back, Mr. White. Shit.

P.S. This probably doesn’t need to be said, but the song is fucking terrible, by the way.

Man, you can tell people only look at the pictures in skateboarding magazines since the July issue of The Skateboard Mag has been out for a couple weeks and I haven’t seen any mention of this ridiculousness I caught in the news section around the blogodrome (edit: never mind, You Will Soon just posted an article on it today). In what very well might be the lamest marketing extension of mainstream skateboarding ever, a skate trading card game, called Super Heat: Throw Down, is now in stores. I imagine you’ll be able to find the cards in the same aisle as Magic: The Gathering and everlasting virginity.

Their website is still under construction and doesn’t have too much information available — probably because they can’t afford to pay their web designer due to nobody on the entire mother fucking planet wanting to buy these things. However, they do include instructions on how to play the game, which in all honesty, seem considerably more complicated than skateboarding itself.

What demographic does this even appeal to? Time traveling ten-year-old nerds from the 1990s? I have a hard time picturing a generation raised on EA Skate being all that interested in playing with trading cards. Fuck, man, if you’re that bored you might as well actually go skateboarding.

I love how there’s a very significant portion of the human population that lives to out-crazy other humans. Some people just won’t be content reaching a stopping point, because to them, there is no stopping point. Their craziness just reaches on into infinity. Indeed, they are the music makers, and they are the dreamers of dreams. They serve their purpose in society, without them, there would be no innovation, no brilliant insights, no horrific car wrecks.

This is just beyond ridiculous — it’s blazing a trail through the wild frontier of completely inexplicable absurdity. The guy’s just chillin’ out, soaking in the sights on his way to work. Maybe he works at a factory that produces really little joysticks that can fit in your pocket and allow you to steer a motorcycle. Come on, it’s not like that would be the most unbelievable thing about this video.

There are those who like to profess that science fiction lied to us, that it offered false promises and brilliant fantasies that science fact could never deliver. These people are, obviously, the first who will be destroyed by the machines because they are, obviously, retarded. It’s called science fiction for a reason. If they paired up Predator and Santa Claus in a blood-stained Holiday blockbuster you don’t want to miss, it wouldn’t mean that would actually come true. …I hope.

Nevertheless, it’s not hard to feel a little gypped anyway. Flying cars, jet packs, sassy robotic maids… granted, all of these technologies technically exist, but their applications aren’t affordable, convenient, or even particularly useful for that matter. And unfortunately, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Because of our culture’s insane value system, innovations in technology are geared towards what will make the most money. Fuck it, we might have a cure for AIDS if having AIDS didn’t happen to make so many people rich. We might have found incredible alternatives for all our disappearing natural resources if the average shithead wasn’t more concerned with how “real” the sports on their fucking flatscreen look. And we’d have the Internet on planes if wireless companies could figure out a way to bill you for it.